Smoke
by the time and the tide
Summary: His last thought was of his wife, and how he could never keep his promise to her. Matthew, Mary, and the tragedy of war. An AU story.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: The soundtrack to this is Lisa Gerrard's "In Exile." __The piece is sad, admittedly. But I hope a good read nonetheless. _

_Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended. _

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><p>Smoke settled over the trenches. The rain that had fallen in torrents during the night returned with the morning. Somehow the clouds knew what had happened here. As if suddenly stumbling upon the wreckage below, they halted their marching pace and in their horror, opened and wept. Wept bitter tears for what they saw. Tears that fell lightly, slowly trickling down the mounds of dirt. Crawling. Sliding. A ripple of blood and water winding with the curves of the trench. Disfigured masses of wood and metal littered the ground. Barbed wire hovered above the walls of the ravines like foam on earthen waves. The gray sky mirrored its cousin below. Dark trails of clouds covered the sky as smoke leeched acrid fingers through the channels of mud.<p>

He watched as the tendrils of gray slowly grew, gorging themselves on what little clean air remained. He watched as the smoke invaded what had become his home.

Home.

This dirty place.

This wretched hole he'd lived in for so long.

But where was home now? London? Manchester? Downton? How could he call any of those places home again - with their green lawns and blue skies. How could he ever return to a place where life merely was, simple and light. Where innocence and beauty existed free from the gaping wounds of battle. How could he call that home when all he could see was death, all he do was kill, and all he could taste was smoke.

How different his life might have been. Those first nights when he climbed into his cot after training, exhausted and filled with pride. He would dream of London. He dreamt of the wonderful days of leave he would spend in the company of his fiancée. He even dared to dream of their life to be. He would dream of her and all his fears would dissipate. He would think of her and he knew he had been right all along. She was the one who made it right.

How different his life had become. Those first days when his pale white hands became dark crimson with the blood of his men, where he saw friends begging for death as gas liquefied their lungs – in those chapters of war, when his days were counted in cigarettes and mortar shells, he realized the life he'd tried to make away from this hell had never really existed. When he finally climbed into the dugout, his heart suffocating and his body aching from battle, he would not dream of London. When he closed his eyes at night, it was not the small lovely thing that had agreed to be his wife so many months ago who appeared to him. It was not her voice he longed for, her embrace he needed. And when he stood his post, alone and cold, he could not think of Lavinia.

Lavinia was the future. A future so foreign and alien to his life now that to think of it was sacrilege. The future was dangerous. It held too many promises, overflowing with hopes and dreams. He once took comfort in thoughts of what would happen 'after,' how he would leave this vile place and somehow he would be saved, be reborn, somehow. Somehow.

But such naivety was soon surrendered to the bloody reality of the present. The present that had shown him how the thoughts that had once cheered and comforted him, had evolved into a virus - painful and deadly. He saw it in the faces of his men, saw how they hid their fears in the irrational concept of the future.

It was delusion. It was denial. It could get a man killed and often did.

No, when he stumbled back to his bunk after countless hours of killing – or worse, waiting to kill, waiting to die, his hands still gripping the phantom handle of his pistol - he did not yield to the poisonous thoughts of the 'future.' Instead his mind would stray into memories of his past, the only sanctuary he possessed any longer. He would retreat to those parts of his heart he had kept hidden and locked away. In those final moments before sleep, when he could no longer maintain the pretense, he would think of time long ago; of a ghost he'd tried to bury. When his mind refused to still, and all the blood and dirt and death refused to retreat, it was not Lavinia that kept the nightmares at bay.

When he was broken, and knew there was no more strength left to bare the horrors he was forced to witness and employ every day, only one could quiet the storm within. Her face, her voice, her hands – unbidden – would appear just as the swell threatened to pull him under. She would come and drive back the demons. She would be there when his own mind turned against him; and he knew the life he'd created before was wrong. He had been the one who made it wrong.

So when he returned to Downton that night and saw her, a vision of love and life waiting for him, longing only for him he knew what he must do. He took her hands, gently kissed each one and looked at her. It was as though he was seeing her for the first time as he tried to tell her without words how sorry he was and how desperately he needed her. She slowly withdrew her own pure, white hand from his and placed it on his cheek. He moved to kiss her palm and in that moment the room around them emptied. Holding her as if she might dissolve, he felt the heavy burden of war ease around him. And for the first time since he'd walked away from her on that bright summer day when the world was young, he realized – of all the things he'd said and done – the truth was still standing before him.

Resting his forehead against hers, their hearts at last beating together. "Marry me," he whispered and felt her nod, felt her arms around his neck and brought his own to her shoulders, gathering her closer.

And as the vicar said those familiar words he held her hands in his, memorizing their cool touch. Carrying her to his room that night, he felt her fingers resume their resting place on his cheek and he closed his eyes, forced himself to remember. Because then it was over, and he held her for the last time on the platform, train whistles urging him to board and knowing he must leave her – all the while his arms protested and held her firm.

"Wherever you go, remember my heart will be with you always. Bring it home to me." She kissed him as he breathed his promise and did what he knew he hadn't the strength to - she let him go.

Rolling his head to the sky, he felt the rain run down his face. His tears mingled with the tears of the sky. If he tried, he could feel her hand on his face wiping away the dirt. He tried not cry. Boys don't cry. Soldiers don't cry. He remembered once feeling pity for the men he heard weeping, begging for wives and mothers. Yet here he was. Tears and cries for his own mother, his own wife choking him. The mud seeping into his jacket, mixing with the blood seeping from his back.

His legs felt…. Well, he could hardly feel his legs. What did it matter now. He stared at the trench wall, the metal bars jutting out, the still white hand of a nameless comrade flung across the top. His eyes moved towards the smoke, now creeping over his legs and he wondered at it. How many days had he watched this gray spectre slip its icy fingers around his enemy? How many times had he felt the sick relief of knowing that the very smoke, which now stalked him, had been the final curtain for his foe?

There was something he was supposed to do when he saw smoke like this. He was meant to do something – if only he could remember what it was. The fog that surrounded him had invaded his mind as well.

A mask.

He needed his mask. Where was his mask? Flexing his finger, he recognized the sleek black rubber of his gas mask. Of course. It was on his belt, affixed to his side just as the army had taught him. He must get it on. He couldn't move his left arm to reach it. Why couldn't he move his arm? Shifting his right shoulder, he used what little strength he still possessed to swing his hand to the side.

The smoke was all around him now. He had so little time. If only he had realized how little time he had all along. If only he'd not been so proud, let his heart be wounded so. Perhaps they could have had more time together. Perhaps he could have been more to her than husband of a single night.

But the smoke had finally found him, and his arms refused to obey. His last thought was of his wife, and how he could never keep his promise to her.


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N_: _Soundtrack for this chapter is Lisa Gerrard's "Come Tenderness." _

_Again, I own neither the song nor the characters. Thank you for reading. _

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><p>Everything changed the moment he heard her cry. He'd been in the library looking for a book that no longer mattered but that they'd argued over at breakfast. Skimming over the soft, worn jackets Robert Crawley traced the years of his life, each book chronicled a memory: Byron to soothe his soul in those first, guilty months of a marriage engineered by others; Shakespeare to translate the love they'd at last discovered together as husband and wife; and Tolstoy for answers when he'd lost and gained heir, when war broke out, when Matthew left to fight for King and country while he struggled to find relevance in a world unrecognizable from one day to the next.<p>

Even now, as the Earl of Grantham reveled in the joy brought by his daughter's marriage and anticipation for his newest grandchild, a sadness kept about him. A shadow hung at the recesses, just behind the curtains. Patient and waiting. He couldn't name it, often forgot that it was there, until those the quiet moments when it would return like a terrible cold racing down his back.

But for a time, that cold shadow had retreated, kept at bay by the presence of his eldest girl once more at home. Mary had moved back to Downton when Matthew left and his family was whole again as the Crawleys settled into the old rhythm of family life. Then one evening eight months ago, she'd informed them all that she was expecting a child for the new year. That day Robert felt even the War couldn't cast a shadow over the peace her news had brought. His daughter was married. His heir was a good and brave man, who desperately loved his daughter, and now they would have proof of this love in a son or daughter. He could not remember a time when his heart felt so light.

When she cried out from the stairs, the chill he'd locked deep inside suddenly flooded his veins. The novel in his hands dropped to the floor. Things seemed to slow, everything happening as if in a dream. Though only seconds passed, it took hours to arrive at Mary's side. Pain was etched in her face and the lightness Robert had locked away in his heart since her announcement leached away. Reason begged him to listen. Perhaps this was normal; birth was not a painless affair. But no matter how hard he tried to convince himself, Robert Crawley held his daughter as if she would break in his arms, defiantly ignoring the real danger she faced. May felt so slight against his chest, so thin. He hadn't noticed. How had he failed to notice?

Cousin Isobel materialized on the stairs, and ordered him to take Mary to her room. He lifted her with ease. It shouldn't have been that easy. It should have been a strain. He wasn't a young man, with a young man's strength. He was middle-aged and his back reminded him of the fact daily. It should have screeched in protest, lifting his grown daughter up the stairs and carrying her across the house.

But it didn't. It didn't because his beautiful, strong and stubborn little girl had become frail – and he hadn't noticed.

In the corner of his eye, figures darted in and out of focus. He brushed past Carson and never acknowledged the stricken request from his butler, asking to relieve the Earl of his burden. Tightening his hold around the woman in his arms, Robert quickened his pace. He knew the path by heart, walked it many times. How often he'd carried his sleeping children up the staircase, their tiny bodies draped around him; taken their hands as they strolled down the hallway, depositing his charges at their door and leaning in for a goodnight kiss. Never before had he walked this path with the unmoving weight of a beloved daughter limp in his arms. He wished she'd stir, gladly sacrifice a lifetime of worry for a whimper, even a scream, to reassure him life still clung to her.

When at last he reached her room, Lord Grantham laid his daughter atop the silk coverings of the bed. He reached behind his head to uncoil her arm, bringing it to rest across her heart. Kneeling at the side, he fixed his eyes on Mary's sallow face and refused to glace downward at the curve protecting his only grandchild.

Shame and denial came hand-in-hand. His denial was not the action of a courageous man; it was self-preservation. The only choice left to a father driven mad by fear. Because he feared it. He feared that the wall around his own heart could crack and flood him with hatred for something that had once brought so much hope. He tried to ignore the voice screaming within that this thing was taking her away. He tried to beat it back, telling himself he couldn't know, that nothing was certain. It could all be quite normal – routine, even.

Robert reached for her hand. He clasped it, pale and chilled, between his own, lightly kissing her fingers with the single-minded reverence of a holy order.

_God save her…_


End file.
